Dean vs Nixon

This editorial in the LA Times is a rare breed of political analysis - the kind that uses history to lend perspective, rather than whitewash fodder. It discusses the legacy of Nixon and the beginning of the Republican Southern Strategy of using coded racism as an appeal to white men.

In discussing the campaign ahead, Howard Dean has said on several occasions now that the Republicans will "do what they've been doing since 1968." But what exactly is that? As far as I can tell, what they've been doing is winning presidential elections. They have won six of the last nine if you count the last one that they did not exactly win.

Of course, that's not exactly what Dean meant. He meant that for him to win in 2004 he has to defeat a system established in 1968 by Richard M. Nixon. Never one to mince words, Dean has described that system as one of "coded racism." And its key code phrase was "states' rights," an old Southern favorite going back to the right to own slaves.

Nixon, always known more as an opportunist than an ideologue, assessed the political landscape when he ran for president in 1968, a time when Republicans had lost every presidential election since the Depression, except for two by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Like Dean today, he asked why are we losing and how can that be changed?

Nixon saw his opportunity in the decline of the great civil rights movement and the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. He judged that the South, a solid Democratic bloc that had never forgiven Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans for the Emancipation Proclamation, was furious about 10 years of civil rights progress and was ready to turn on the Democrats, who had received faithful Southern support since before the Civil War. In the end, Nixon defeated the Democrats not because of their worst disaster, Vietnam, but because of their greatest accomplishment, civil rights.

The article goes on to explain how Nixon snubbed Rockefeller for Vice President, choosing Agnew in order to seal a bargain with segregationist Strom Thurmond, who has switched to the GOP under the understanding that Nixon would pick a "states rights" veep. It also details Nixon's success at packing the Supreme Court with anti-civil rights justices, including the first use of a filibuster to block a Supreme Court nominee in American history.

This article is essential reading! Dean's now famous remarks about the confederate flag were aimed squarely at Nixon's legacy - we need to re-unite the nation from the divisive racial politics that are still being used to sway voters into voting against their economic self-interest.